The Dedication of Pete's Place

On Father's Day at 1pm, (Sunday, June 19th) we will dedicate "Pete's Place" at the Canastota Public Library. This celebration is open to everyone in the community.

Pete’s Place, which is on the first floor of the library, holds our collections of DVDs, books on CDs and Science Fiction. We are dedicating Pete's Place to the honor of our beloved colleague, Pete J. Leggett who passed away last year after more than 13 years of service to the library.

Anyone who knew Pete was impressed with his interests--from cooking to anthropology, films and science fiction, fishing and making or repairing books.  Pete was also an artist.  He sketched, airpainted, painted, made beautiful jewelry and knives and arrowheads.  Pete was our fix-it man at the library.  He repaired  tables, chairs, our computers and even changed the lightbulbs.  He was ingenious at some of the inventions he came up with to get things done in a more efficient way.  One Christmas years ago, Pete invented a plant watering system that fed our live Christmas Tree in the lobby of the library.  And, as many patrons know, Pete could repair audio tape that ripped and rewind it on the tape deck.  He could repair pop up books and take scratches out of our DVDs.  Book repair was another of Pete's skills. 

When selecting what we wanted to put into Pete's Place, we chose collections that were near and dear to Pete Leggett’s heart. It was well known that Pete had a vast knowledge of current movies and could match a patron with the perfect movie! Pete was also a voracious Science Fiction fan!  Pete always worked the afternoon/evening shift here at the library and I still catch myself looking towards the elevator at noon, awaiting his arrival.  He would walk in listening to a bestseller that was just released on CD or he was listening to an eBook.  That was our Pete!  And, we hope that he would approve of Pete's Place.

Pete’s Place is a small area in the library and we have attempted to fill it with enormous memories of our colleague and all that he meant to the community and those he touched every day! We hope that you will stop by to take a look at Pete's Place and have some light refreshments with us!

The Canastota Public Library is located at 102 W. Center Street in Canastota.